Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom
Page 23
She looked in the Cadillac. A key was rusted fast to the ignition. The car had not budged since Duncan parked it there close to one year before. He had opened the garage door vaguely intending to pull the Cadillac in and shut the door behind him with the engine running. But the car had died when he got back in and would not start though it had plenty of spark and enough gas and Duncan finally gave up and picked up Cat and brought him and the painting and the ashes inside. Misty turned away and climbed the front steps. Cat sat on a rattan chair on the porch, licking a paw and otherwise ignoring her. Misty ran her hand across his back. He purred once then went back to the paw. She breathed deep, stepped up to the door and knocked. When no one replied she looked in the window.
“God,” she said, “what a pig sty.”
A horse whinnied from afar. She turned. Duncan rode towards the house, an empty box under one arm and a sleeping bag tied to the saddle behind him. He had spent the last two days building a cairn at the site of Sean Delaney’s death. That morning he had spread Pris’s ashes around the rocks, finally releasing her and fulfilling her last wish as best he could. He spurred his mare when he saw Misty. He reined the horse in front of the house and jumped off.
“Hi,” Misty said.
He hugged her. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You dyed your hair.”
“No,” Misty said, “this is my real color.”
“Well, it looks good.” He tied the horse to the porch rail. “What brings you out here?”
“You invited me. Remember?”
"Of course I did.”
Duncan set the box on the steps and slapped the dust from his pants with a glove. His red hair had grown back long below his Stetson. His beard covered most of his chin and some of his cheeks with a fine, red stubble. He had filled out since she saw him last. He was now lean bordering on muscular. He stepped onto the porch and opened the door.
“Come on in.”
She followed him inside. The remains of meals lay on a table in front of the television. Magazines and books were scattered on the couch and on the floor before it. The carpet needed vacuuming and while the house did not exactly smell bad, neither did it smell good. Duncan removed his hat.
“Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”
“I should have called.”
“I wasn’t here anyway,” Duncan said. He transferred magazines from chair to couch. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to shower.
Instead of sitting, Misty wandered through the house. One room contained an easel and twenty canvases stacked against a wall. All were landscapes of lonely, barren vistas. Another room was almost empty. Sleeping Pris hung without benefit of frame on the wall opposite the window. Misty shivered and closed the door. She went into the kitchen. Dishes lay piled in the sink and on the table. She looked at a postcard stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. It was from the Hollywood Tropicana, and it depicted tanned, oiled women whose synthetic breasts strained the limits of string bikinis, except for the vaguely familiar blond girl in the center, a girl with chocolate eyes and strawberry lips, and breasts the size of softballs, though much softer and not as white. Misty turned the card over. Thought you might enjoy this, it said, Benjamin. She put the card back. A letter from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office lay on the table. She politely ignored it. If she had read it she would have discovered that Sheila, as part of a plea agreement brokered by a Los Angeles city councilwoman, had pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault and was placed on three years probation, fined five hundred dollars, and was ordered to serve four hundred hours of community service. What the letter did not say was that subsequent to the sentencing the councilwoman purchased three of Sheila’s paintings at a substantial and deep discount.
Misty put on an apron she found on a hook. She filled the sink with hot water and soap, and spent the next fifteen minutes washing china and cutlery. Duncan found her there when he came out of the shower. His hair was wet and his freshly shaved skin was pink and soft. He wore a loose flannel shirt untucked over his blue jeans and his feet poked white and thin from the cuffs.
“You don’t have to do those,” he said.
Misty turned and scowled. “Jesus, Duncan,” she said, the words opening a floodgate, “you need a woman around here!”
The dam containing his loss burst at last. He fell into Misty’s surprised, soapy arms, his anguish flowing down his cheeks in salty torrents. He held her until his grief emptied its painful river into a thirsty desert, and past the dwindling desolation that remained he held her still.